"How did he get to Adam?" said Auriele. "Who was supposed to be watching him?"
"Me," I said after a stunned moment. "I guess that would be me."
"No," said Auriele. "That would have been Samuel. Ben said he left Adam with Samuel and you."
"Samuel's not pack," growled Darryl, eyes light gold in the darkness of his face.
Sam wasn't Samuel, I thought. In the normal course of things Samuel would have kept that challenge from happening. I wondered if Paul or Henry had realized that. Probably not.
"My fault," I said.
"No." I'd left Mary Jo in Jesse's room, but she must have followed me down. "Not your fault," Mary Jo said. "Maybe Warren or Darryl could have stopped Paul, but Henry was very careful to make sure they weren't there." She gave me an inscrutable look that would have done credit to Darryl, inscrutable but not overtly hostile. "They wouldn't have thought Samuel would interfere. They think of him as a lone wolf, not as Adam's friend."
The look, I realized, was to let me know that she wouldn't tell them about Samuel unless I did.
"Henry?" Darryl was shocked into dropping his anger. "Henry?"
Mary Jo lifted her chin. "He planned it." She looked at me, then away. "He wants Adam dead and is using Paul . . . used me, too, in order to accomplish it."
"Is that what they told you?" Henry himself came into the kitchen. He was a compact man, a little taller than me, with a quick smile and hazel eyes that could look either gray or gold rather than the more usual brown and green. He wore his hair in a conservative cut and almost certainly shaved with a regular razor rather than an electric because an electric never produces quite the same well-groomed look. "Mary Jo - "
"Inconvenient," I murmured. "Not being able to lie to another werewolf."
If Mary Jo hadn't stepped in front of me, he'd have hit me. She took the hit for me and it knocked her into the center island. The granite top broke loose under the impact and slid - Jesse caught the granite slab before it overbalanced and fell on the floor, shoving it back on its base. If he'd hit me that hard, I wouldn't have gotten up the way Mary Jo did - and she was holding her ribs.
Auriele stepped in front of Henry when he would have gone to her. Her lips peeled back. "¡Hijo de perra!" she said, her voice alive with anger.
Henry flushed, so the insult hit home. Calling someone a son of a dog is a good insult among werewolves.
"Hijo de Chihuahua," said Mary Jo.
Auriele shook her head. "Darryl kept saying that it couldn't be Paul behind the unrest we've been having for the last couple of years. No one would listen to Paul. We knew he was right, but no one else fit. I would have suspected Peter before I suspected you."
Peter was the lone submissive wolf in the pack. It was inconceivable that a submissive wolf would play power games. If Auriele was right, this had started long before the disastrous bowling-alley incident.
"How long have you known that Mary Jo would have dropped you like a hot potato for Adam?" I asked.
He snarled something rude.
"You have no common sense whatsoever," said Auriele. I assume she was talking to me, so I answered her.
"He's not going to do anything with you between us," I told her. "He's smart enough to be afraid of you."
"Since I was killed for certain," said Mary Jo, answering the question I'd asked Henry. "Isn't that right? The first time I regained consciousness. You kissed my forehead, and I called you by Adam's name. But it sounds like you had a pretty good idea about it even earlier."
"Get out of here," said Darryl, his voice low with anger. "Get out of this house, Henry. When you come back to see this fight, you come in from the outside door. And you'd better hope Adam wins this fight, or I'll wipe the ground with you so hard they won't need a box to bury you in. All they'll need is a mop."
Henry flushed, went white, then flushed again. He left the room without a word. The outside door opened and slammed shut.
Ben strolled in, looking grim, Sam right behind him.
"Where's Henry going in such a hurry? Darryl, good - I was looking for you. I just got through talking to Warren downstairs. Have you heard . . . ?" His voice trailed off when he saw Jesse standing there. He took a good look at all of us. "I see you have."
Darryl stiffened. "Samuel?" His voice was soft.
"He's been like this a couple of days," offered Ben. "So far, so good. It's a long story, and you can hear it later: we're due in the garage in five."
Chapter 11
THE ONLY REASON THE GARAGE WASN'T PACKED WITH werewolves was that there hadn't been enough time for the word to go around.
Instead of thirty or so, we only had eighteen, not including Sam, who wasn't pack. But I had to keep looking around and counting because there seemed to be fewer people than my count showed. Most dominance fights, like boxing or wrestling matches, are full of jostling, cheering, jeering, and betting. This one was eerily silent, and only one person was moving.
Paul jogged in place on one side of the padded floor, stopping every ten or fifteen seconds to stretch or do a little shadowboxing. He was a tall man with blond hair and a short red beard. His skin was the kind that is usual for redheads, pale and freckled. The excitement of the impending fight left him flushed. Like Adam, he wore only a pair of gi pants.
There is no tradition that dictates dominance fights have to be done in human form. It is common, though, because it makes the challenge more about skill and strength. When you are armed with fangs and claws, a lucky hit can take out a more skilled opponent.
On the far side of the mats from Paul, Adam stood in horse stance, head bowed, eyes closed, and shoulders relaxed. All signs of pain were gone from his face, but he hadn't been able to eliminate the pain-caused stiffness in the time that he'd walked from the house to the mat. Even if he had, only an idiot would look at the broken scabs on his feet and hands and not understand that he was in trouble.
As Alpha, even as badly hurt as he had been, he really should have been healing faster than this. Granted that werewolves, even the same werewolf, will heal wounds at different rates depending upon a number of things. He might have been hurt worse than he'd shown us, or the trouble he'd been having with his pack could be interfering with his ability to heal. I tried not to look worried.
Jesse and I had the equivalent of ringside seats at the edge of the mat on the side where Adam stood - traditional for the family of the Alpha, but not smart when neither of us could reasonably defend ourselves if the fight rolled off the mats. Sam stood beside Jesse, and Warren stood between us, presumably to keep the combatants from hurting us.